


First Adventure: Angst

by crookedcig



Series: How to Drive a Genius Mad in a Single Simple Step [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Implied Consent, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedcig/pseuds/crookedcig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A choose-your-own-adventure style story for the Sherlock Series 3 mini-bang (http://sherlockminibang.tumblr.com/).  Each story is told in three parts and you can chose your own combination of angst, romance, or non-romantic fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part the First: Descent

[ ](http://cuttleflesh.tumblr.com/)

Watching a Holmes being addicted was nearly beautiful enough to put up with the fallout, later. Lestrade had thought he’d seen enough to last a lifetime with the younger of the two when he was strung out on cocaine and even more slender, pale, ethereal than ever. Gaunt and stunning with eyes too big for his face and a smile too full of teeth to be anything other than predatory.

But Mycroft Holmes as an addict was another thing entirely. The death of his little brother had brought out something that no one claimed previous experience with, no one seemed to understand or even begin to know what to do about. Working long hours was nothing new, and it didn’t really occur to anyone that he shouldn’t be spending all night in his office or at the Diogenes Club because that’s what he’d always done, long before the leap from St Bart’s had taken something away from him. The too-big house in Belgravia stood empty more nights than not, but it wasn’t anything different than before.

What was strange was the bruises. The limping. The look in his eyes as if he was going to eat them all alive when they weren’t paying attention, sparking fire and burning up so fast you couldn’t really be sure the expression had been there to begin with.

He was too smart to pursue his employees. Anyone that could even remotely be considered an underling was immediately ignored, as was anyone who could be seen to benefit from a personal relationship with a member of the Home Office, no matter how lowly he purported to be.

Instead, Mycroft Holmes in his sleek black car descended on curbs outside of clubs where men wore less clothing than women. He arrived at bars that were poorly lit enough to hide his face and his identity, though not the promise his long fingers and false but well bred smiles offered. He invaded like a spy, unexpected and sometimes unwelcome and largely unknown, staying only long enough to get what he needed, not returning until the rest of the clientele and most of the staff wouldn’t remember him from the last time. Holmeses being peak predators, none of this was new to him. The game never changed, only the venue.

“This is probably none of my business--” the look on Mycroft’s face told him that he was correct, and Lestrade sighed softly, wanting nothing more than to go back to work and forget the whole thing. This was just a  last vestige of guilt or duty or something he felt to the Holmeses, some strange loyalty wrought by the younger getting sick on his shoes during a come-down one too many times. By watching the elder sit beside a hospital bed in a rehab center while his brother hurled insults and vases of flowers at him with equal strength and accuracy. “You’ve stopped being subtle.” Motioning at the ring of bruises around Mycroft’s neck and then the condom wrapper visible in the bin beside the door, Greg shook his head.

After that day, anyone who told him they weren’t afraid of Mycroft Holmes got a throatful of uneasy, unending laughter from Detective Inspector Lestrade. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon checking to make sure those steel gray eyes hadn’t left frostbite on his face when Mycroft had lifted one hand to offer him the door.

 

* * *

 

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with more angst? Go [here](../2230922).

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with platonic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108445/chapters/2230957).

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with romantic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108849/chapters/2231890).


	2. Part the Second: Wallow

Things always began unexpectedly with the Holmeses. One had shown up at a crime scene in fishnets and ratty combat boots, high as a kite and screeching something about a puppy while his john tried to disappear into the pavement. The other kidnapped Greg one day on his way home from work and sucked his cock in the back of a very nice car while the driver pretended not to watch.

That second one was after the younger Holmes had died, of course, and Mycroft and slid and slithered into a mire of self-abuse so stinking and profound that Greg wasn’t even sure it was any better than the cocaine had ever been. But that lead to the question of if Mycroft would better than his brother in fishnets and ratty combat boots, a decidedly dangerous thought and one he had no intention of entertaining more than once a week. If he could help it.

The hunting at nightclubs stopped. The bruises faded away. But twice a week, then three, then four, then every single night that black car would arrive and a pale hand would drag him into the back seat and Mycroft would choke himself on Greg, moaning and sometimes sobbing with more than just the minor hurt at the back of his throat. Greg began to get a fist in his hair just to keep him from going too fast, to force him to be careful, and the tugging on soft auburn strands seemed to help. It made Mycroft focus, and slow. On particularly calculated tug and a hand tight on the back of his neck led to the first time Mycroft got off, too.

One night, or rather one very early morning, the car arrived at a crime scene without Mycroft in it. The driver waited until the DI was done, and then took him to the Diogenes Club. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d gone, other than that he was afraid of what Mycroft might do (with someone else) if he didn’t. Bending Mycroft over a couch he wouldn’t be able to afford in a decade, he murmured words that made no sense and gave neither of them any more comfort than each other’s presence did.

Three months in, the car took him to the too-big house in Belgravia. Suddenly, the gunshots at Irene Adler’s home made even more sense: they’d been meant to rankle an elder brother as much as summon the police. They fucked on the kitchen floor, the two of them tangled together and Mycroft’s hands smelling of garlic and oil. Then they ate in silence and fucked each other again in the shower, rabid and demanding. Greg didn’t even remember getting into bed, but he woke up there, with Mycroft half on top of him and snoring faintly.

They left marks on each other. Mycroft was partial to biting and it meant Greg had imprints across both his shoulders, down his ribs. A few times, hard bruises on his inner thighs. Himself, the DI had a habit of using callused hands to spank and grab so hard that Mycroft could hardly sit some days, pacing around his office and ignoring the other man just long enough that it would earn him more poppy-red skin. If Holmes lost his voice now and then or Lestrade called in sick more often than he had before, no one commented, least of all their friends. Anthea never said anything at all and John had found Mary. She was sick. Because John Watson couldn’t love anything that didn’t promise to break him.

Not that they were much different, really; Lestrade needed to feel needed, and Mycroft needed to feel nothing at all.

 

[ ](http://cuttleflesh.tumblr.com/)

 

* * *

 

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with more angst? Go [here](../2230923).

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with platonic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108445/chapters/2231807).

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with romantic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108849/chapters/2231892).


	3. Part the Third: Surface

He’d expected, for a single moment, that Mycroft would meet him at a cafe, or a restaurant. Like his exwife had, like others had before when they expected messy confrontations and wanted to leverage the power of public shame to keep things quiet and apparently civil, even when things were seething just past skin deep.

It ultimately came as no surprise that Mycroft’s office proved just as silence-inducing as the street might have been. Something about the oppressive dark wood and tyrannical desk that was likely older than many sovereign countries had Lestrade keeping his mouth shut until well after he’d been seated, like a child sent to the headmaster for scolding rather than a grown man confronting his [friend/colleague/brother of insane and recently dead murder specialist/holes he sometimes fucked]. Something about the smell of dry leather and old paper had even the decidedly not-posh DI biting his lip to stay quiet even as Anthea served them both tea when work kept them from taking anything harder, anything that might have burned to ease the sting of what was happening between them. Replacing one hurt in his chest with another might not have been the adult thing to do but it would have certainly been easier.

He wondered if Mycroft seethed when Greg glanced at the pretty woman’s cleavage.

There was no question that he noticed. He was, after all, a Holmes.

The return of the world’s only (not dead) consulting detective had rocked things apart again, just when everything was finally starting to settle. The things his ‘death’ had destroyed had never been rebuilt, but the rubble had stopped caving in on itself these past few months, and that was nearly enough for most of them. But his rather abrupt arrival back in London, smirking past a tremor of doubt so small that few of them saw it at first, had shaken them all to smithereens once more.

They’d been together, when Mycroft’s phone had begun to ring, which was rare enough in and of itself to surprise them both. Even now, he wasn’t sure if it was how pale and panicked the other man had gone or the strange ringtone (Flight of the Bumblebee, which was decidedly not Mycroft’s taste) that had brought Greg up short, loosing his belt from around Mycroft’s wrists so he could answer the damned thing. The voice on the other end, just audible through Mycroft’s flesh, that ginger and velvet thing that only the Holmes men could pull off had them both soft and shaking instantly. Lestrade had been kicked out of bed, house, and life only moments later. That had been three weeks ago, and he was starting to get annoyed.

“I don’t see what this changes.” Greg was the first one to break the silence, his dark eyes settling on Mycroft’s forehead because it was close enough to eye contact to maybe fool the other man (ha) but didn’t have the added cost of actually meeting his cool gray gaze and the weight he threw around behind it.

“It changes everything. He will notice. Or deduce.”

“He’ll delete it straight away. You know him, he doesn’t like thinking about that sort of thing let alone admitting any of us give in to animal needs.” It was as though they couldn’t use his name, Mycroft and Greg, sitting there talking about him as if he was an unspeakable disease, in hushed tones and reverent avoidance of summoning his attention. He Who Shall Not Be Named. The thought nearly got Lestrade to chuckle into his cup, picturing the younger Holmes with no nose or hair, tormenting little children with a wand.

There was a moment of silence so long that it settled over their heads like a noose, heavy with threat. Greg shifted, uncomfortable, and frowned, unable to discern from the other man’s expression what it was he was thinking. Feeling, if he felt at all which the DI knew damned well he did despite all evidence to the contrary.

“We will both be busy enough with him that we will no longer need this.” Whatever it was. Mycroft’s mouth nearly lifted into a smile, a real one unlike the anemic things he offered other people when they were paying too much attention, when Greg sort of snarled.

“Fuck need. What about want?” That seemed to catch Mycroft entirely by surprise, the thought of allowing himself something he wanted (he had to want it, after all, or Greg might just wither into embarrassed nothingness because he wanted too much to not be wanted in return). It had been decades since Mycroft had considered something as trivial and paltry as want in his decisions. Since he’d factored want into the equation of his life, sliding it in beside need and duty and England and younger brother as if it was just as important.

Both their phones beeped with an impatience that they knew was only partially imagined, given who was demanding their attention.

[TRIPLE HOMICIDE. CHILDREN. WHAT A WELCOME HOME. --SH]

And Sherlock Holmes blew them all apart again, more easily than even the semtex vest that Moriarty had fitted on John Watson’s chest, years and miles and broken hearts ago.

 

* * *

 

Want to chose a new adventure? Go [here](../../../../series/66248)!


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